KOZHIKODE: By terming the recent riots at Kanhangad as communal, the police have reportedly displeased the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leadership. The party’s Kasargod district committee has been putting pressure on the police officials to dilute the incident by withdrawing Section 153(A) of IPC from the cases charged against the accused in the riots and label the cases as political, sources said.The IUML leaders have already approached Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in this regard and two IUML MLAs of Kasargod have been putting pressure on the officials to defuse the issue. Sources maintained that IUML was the only party which expressed protest against charging Section 153(A) in Kanhangad riots while the CPM,Congress and the BJP vouched for strong action against the guilty.It was the stringent action taken by the police during the riots that evoked a strong resentment among the IUML leaders. Realising the communal angle in the riots, police took as many as 130 cases on non-bailable charges under Section 153 (A) (Promoting enmity on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony). Of around 780 accused, the police have arrested nearly 200 till now.Besides, Kannur Range DIG S Sreejith submitted a report to the DGP saying that an analysis of cases in the last 10 years has revealed that the ‘branding of conflicts with communal angle as mere political issues at the behest of political parties has proved counter productive’. The report said that the entire coastal belt of Kasargod was highly vulnerable to communal riots and it proposed the setting up of special control room and special patrolling units in Kasargod to gather intelligence and prevent riots of communal nature.In fact, a detailed analysis of the list of cases during the last 10 years corroborates the DIG’s observations in the report. As many as 1,113 cases have been registered in the district during the period where the complainant belongs to one community and all the accused belong to another community. However, the number of cases registered under Section 153(A) and other relevant sections are just below 300. Most importantly, none of the accused has been convicted in the last 10 years in all the 1,113 cases. Of the 11,444 accused, only 4,833 have been arrested, which clearly shows that the other 6,611 are at large, unfettered and poised to spread communal violence.While 427 cases have been charge sheeted, around 65 cases were withdrawn during the period. The total number of policemen in the district is only around 1,400. When contacted, IUML Kasargod district general secretary M C Khamaruddin stuck to the party’s stand and alleged that it was the police who were creating the problems. “It’s the police who are branding the issues as communal. Police officials are behaving like they have some aversion towards the IUML workers. Though mosques were attacked during Kanhangad riots, not even a single temple was attacked. However, police charged cases under section 153 (A) only against IUML workers. Even purely communal attacks made by other party were not registered under the section,” he said.However, DIG Sreejith, in his report, made it clear that “politicisation of cases and intense parleying at the behest of political parties have in turn encouraged riotous behaviour and it’s high time that the glaring communal problems be addressed correctly rather than shrouding those cases under political clouds.”
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